Chapter 29
CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE
Isle of Uist, Western Isles, Scotland
“Ek... heiti... Isolda.”
The words tasted foreign on her tongue—angular and rough. Isolda traced the corresponding runes beneath her fingertip.
Me name is Isolda.
She’d been at it for over a week now—stealing hours in Ragnar’s secret library when he was occupied with patrols or with the Council, working through his mother’s Norse sagas with a borrowed quill and a scrap of parchment she’d nicked from the solar.
The grammar twisted in ways that made Gaelic seem straightforward, and half the vocabulary shared roots with Scots words she already knew, which made it even more confusing.
But she wanted to do it for him.
She dipped her quill and the door opened without warning. Isolda’s hand jerked, the quill snapping against the parchment, ink splattering across her careful notes.
Ragnar filled the doorway, his dark blond hair damp at the temples from the morning’s training. His blue eyes moved from her face to the open saga to the ruined parchment to the broken quill dripping ink between her fingers.
“What are ye daein’?”
She flipped the parchment over with what she hoped was casual speed and not the frantic scramble it actually was. “Readin’.”
“In Norse?”
“In yer maither’s translations.”
His mouth twitched. He stepped inside, the small room shrinking around him the way it always did. “Ye’ve ink on yer chin, little wolf.”
Her hand flew to her face before she caught his expression. She stood, brushing ink-stained hands against her skirts. “I heard ye. In the trainin’ yard, with Freyr.”
Ragnar’s expression didn’t change. “How much did ye hear?”
She held his gaze. “Freyr wants tae send me tae Skye. Tae keep me safe by puttin’ distance between us.”
“Isolda—”
“Ye refused.”
“Aye.” He said it quietly.
“Ye could have agreed. It would’ve been the practical choice—the strategic one.”
She stepped closer. The narrow window threw a shaft of grey afternoon light between them, catching dust motes and the faint scent of leather and old vellum that clung to everything in the room.
“But what ye did was the most reckless, stubborn, wonderful thing anyone’s ever done fer me.
And I wanted ye tae ken that I ken. That I’m nae blind tae what it costs ye—choosin’ me over the safer path. ”
“It daesnae cost me anythin’.” His voice had dropped to that low register that made her pulse skitter. “Because there is nae path that daesnae involve ye beside me.”
“Ragnar—”
“I spent too many years keepin’ people at arm’s length because I was convinced that was how ye protect them.” He closed the remaining distance between them. “Ye showed me that I was wrong, Isolda.”
His thumb traced the line of her jaw, and the tenderness in it undid something she hadn’t realized she was still holding together.
“So nay, little wolf. I’ll nae send ye away.” His forehead dropped to hers. “I need ye right here. Where I can wake up and ken ye’re still mine.”
“I was always yers.” The confession came out rough and raw. “Even when I was too stubborn tae admit it.”
His lips claimed hers with a heat that buckled her knees, his hand sliding from her jaw to the back of her neck, fingers threading into her hair, tilting her head to deepen the angle.
She opened for him on instinct, her hands fisting in the front of his tunic, pulling him closer until there was nothing between them but wool and want.
Ragnar groaned against her mouth—a low, devastating sound that vibrated through her chest and settled somewhere molten and aching between her hips.
His free arm locked around her waist, lifting her onto her toes, pressing her against him until she could feel every hard line of his body through the layers, the heat of his skin seeping through fabric like fire through parchment.
“Ye taste like ink,” he murmured against her lips.
“And ye taste like trouble.”
The laugh that followed was breathless and swallowed by another kiss that was deeper, slower, thorough in a way that made her wonder if there was a Norse word for the specific devastation of being kissed by a man who treated her mouth like something sacred and ruinous in equal measure.
Probably.
Ragnar pulled back first. “There’s a trade delegation arrivin’ at the harbor,” he said, “Bergen shipment. Timber, iron, salt—the last passage before the autumn currents close.”
She forced her fingers to release his tunic, smoothing the wrinkled fabric with hands that weren’t entirely steady. “Are ye goin’?”
“I cannae. There’s a council meetin’ I’ve been puttin’ off, and Olaf’s sent word twice already that if I delay again, he’ll drag me there by me ears.” He scrubbed a hand over his face. “I’m sendin’ Leif and two others tae oversee the exchange. They’ve the manifest and the Bergen terms.”
As if summoned, a sharp knock came at the library door. Freyr’s voice carried through the wood, flat and businesslike. “Leif’s ready. He wants a word before they ride out.”
Ragnar pressed his lips to her temple briefly. “I’ll find ye taenight.”
“I’m countin’ on it.”
He left with Freyr, their voices fading down the narrow passage that led back toward the solar, and the room settled into silence again. Isolda stood alone among his mother’s books, her lips swollen and her heart hammering, the taste of him still warm on her tongue.
Isolda looked down at the broken quill. Ink had pooled across the reading stand, staining the wood in a dark bloom that would take scrubbing to remove. She tidied the parchment, closed the saga with care, and slipped out of the library, pulling the door shut behind her.
The eastern corridor stretched quiet and grey, the stone walls holding the afternoon chill.
Isolda made her way toward the solar—Ragnar kept spare quills in the chest beside his maps, alongside sealing wax and the good parchment he saved for correspondence with the other jarls.
The solar door stood ajar.
She pushed it open. Empty. The maps were still spread across the table, weighted at the corners with stones smoothed by the sea, but Ragnar’s chair sat vacant and the fire had burned low.
From somewhere deeper in the keep she caught the low rumble of his voice, and beneath it, the sharper edge of Olaf’s. Something about a dispute with one of the fishing settlements over nets.
Isolda crossed to the chest and rummaged for a quill, finding one wedged beneath a stick of sealing wax. As she straightened, her hip caught the edge of a document half-tucked beneath the map of the southern coastline.
It slid free, and her eye caught the Bergen seal.
Leif’s already gone.
If the captain challenged the quantities, they would have to send a runner back to the castle. Delay the exchange. Hold the ship in harbor while they waited for Ragnar’s word—and with the autumn currents already shifting, any delay could strand the vessel.
She looked toward the corridor. Ragnar’s voice still carried faintly, tangled with Olaf’s—the kind of discussion that ran long and ended with both men tired and neither satisfied.
I should tell him.
But the delegation was already riding for the harbor, and the harbor was less than half an hour’s ride. By the time she found Ragnar, explained the problem, and he dispatched another rider, Leif could already be in negotiation without the needed documentation.
He wouldnae want me tae go.
The thought surfaced clear and certain. But this wasn’t about defying him. This was about protecting what he’d built. About helping her husband.
“Ewan,” she called softly into the corridor. The guard stationed at the stairwell straightened. “I need an escort tae the harbor. Now.”
Ewan hesitated. “Me lady, the jarl said—”
“If this document daesnae reach them before the exchange begins, it could cause problems.” She held it up, the seal visible. “I’ll be there and back before he’s finished with the Council.”
Isolda could see him weighing it—the risk of letting her go against the risk of costing his jarl a critical trade.
“One guard isnae enough,” he said finally. “I’ll call Gunnar as well.”
“Then be quick about it.”
She gathered her cloak from the hook by the door and tucked the document inside it, her heart beating faster now, though she couldn’t have said whether it was urgency or something else—some faint female intuition pressing against the base of her skull, whispering that this was a mistake.
But she didn’t want to risk the document getting lost or misplaced.
Dinnae be daft. It’s a routine trade at yer own harbor, with yer own men, in broad daylight.
She silenced the whisper and followed the guards down the stairs.
When Isolda arrived at the harbor, she spotted the Bergen vessel immediately.
Men moved across the deck with the swiftness of a crew that had made this run a hundred times before, hauling crates toward the gangplank where Leif stood with a ledger, checking seals.
“Me lady.” Leif’s eyes went to the guards flanking her, then back. “We werenae expectin’ ye—”
She drew the document from her cloak and held it out. “Ye left this in the solar.”
Leif took the parchment, unfolded it, and his expression tightened with surprise followed by quiet relief. “Aye. I’d have been up the creek without this.” He tucked it into his belt. “Thank ye, me lady. Truly.”
“Ye’re welcome, Leif.”
Isolda turned to leave, but then she noticed the captain.
He stood near the stern rail, a grizzled man with leathery hands and wind-scoured features, watching the unloading with an attentiveness that struck her as odd.
This was not the relaxed stance of a man overseeing routine work.
His gaze kept drifting from the crates to the dock to the road that climbed back toward the castle, as though he were measuring distances.
Why would he be nervous? He’s done this run before.
The thought passed through her mind and left. Perhaps he was worried about the currents. Perhaps he simply wanted to be gone before the weather turned.